


natura non constristatur

by xrsenic



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon, World War I, i hate calling things angst but fair warning if u get sad easily, slash if u squint a lil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26021005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xrsenic/pseuds/xrsenic
Summary: Blake paints Schofield.
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	natura non constristatur

The war had never been colorful. Schofield had never held high expectations for it, not like his fellows had when they all signed up together years ago. Fame, glory, honor: these were things he’d never expected, never wished for. He’d never deluded himself with visions of grandeur. He was to play his part. War was war, and that was that. Yet he’d never expected it to be so _drab_.

Schofield wouldn’t consider himself a colorful man. His tastes were standard, his opinions vague and generally agreeable, his humor nonexistent. Excitement was never a priority, spontaneity something he actively avoided. He was quite ordinary, and he was fine with that.

But he’d be damned if the war wasn’t so dull. He didn’t complain; it wasn’t in his nature. It depressed him, though. Everything in France was muted; the olive of their uniforms, the squelching brown of No Man’s Land, the grey of a corpse. Stripped of life, tired, fading, and Schofield had been following. He had been fading, and then came Blake.

Blake showed him color again. The first thing Schofield could remember about him was the piercing blue of his eyes. A pair of spring robins had made a nest in Schofield’s backyard when he was a child. Every day he would come home and watch them for hours, admire the delicate care with which they made their home. Blake’s eyes reminded him of the eggs in that nest, fragile things with thin shells that boasted their presence so loud in pale blue. They shone with a sort of life Schofield hadn’t seen in months and had given up on ever seeing again. Young, fresh, lit from behind with a joke he had yet to tell. They bit into him, baring his soul before him, and they scared Schofield.

The fear hadn’t lasted long. Against all odds, and against Schofield’s own monotony, Blake wormed his way in. His eyes were only the beginning. Next Schofield was introduced to the rose of a blush on his cheeks, creeping fast as wildfire down his neck; the glint of his teeth as he broke into a grin; the chocolate of the hair he always seemed to be pushing back from his brow.

Schofield couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Blake wasn’t only made of color, he created it. The boy was an artist, painting the world in brilliant streaks of apricot and cerulean and evergreen. He breathed life into everything around him. Each story was a work of art, a splash of vibrant in the bleak. He was a prism, refracting the most ordinary things and spitting them back out again, refined and perfected and more beautiful than they had gone in.

Slowly, the world came back into itself. The sky remembered its blue, the grass its gold, the trees first their walnut bark in the winter months, then the green of their leaves as spring came in April.

Yes, war was war. Schofield was still playing his part. But his world wasn’t so stark after Blake came. He began to let himself hope, enjoy, love.

Everything was ripped from him the day they went to find Blake’s brother. Schofield still remembered the colors of the farmhouse as he lay with Blake, the way they slowly dimmed as the boy bled out before him. Searing, raging orange of the burning plane behind them. Sparse fresh green of the grass underlaid with damp, dark mud. Choking crimson blood soaking through a jacket, slicking his hands.

All of that turned to grey.

Watching Blake fade ripped Schofield in two. The boy who had brought color to his life was now drained of that very thing. Warmth from his cheeks faded, the white of his teeth grew harsh, the warm robin’s egg blue of his eyes cooled as life spilled out of him. His last gift of color was a stream of cruel red, and then he lay empty, a shadow. Barely an impression.

The only thing that hadn’t changed was the creamy white of the cherry trees across the depression. Even after Blake’s body had stopped betraying him and his blood had ceased its frantic pumping through Schofield’s fingers, the blossoms had remained. Schofield’s world faded fast, static rushing in to replace Blake’s loss, and there the trees lay, dying just as Blake had, mocking him with their purity.

Better than anything, Schofield remembered the red of Blake’s blood. The rest of the trip was a blur of black and white, fear and determination. Schofield couldn’t recall any of it a week later except for the red. He could never seem to wash it from under his nails.

All the colors Blake had brought to him were lost. He used to know so many. The red, something he could never put his finger on, an unnameable shade, haunted him. It was the only one left.

Schofield didn’t know how long had passed since that day in April; maybe it was Tuesday, maybe it was May. It didn’t matter. His world was more bleak than before Blake had entered it.

Now, as Schofield lay in the trenches, shells screaming around him, color was returning to him. He didn’t know why, or maybe he did, but they were coming back. There was the hot azure of the sky, the gleaming silver of barbed wire. The creeping, fetid yellow of gas. The sea of red where his legs should be.

 _It's cherry red_ , he decided as color bled back into the world and he bled out of it. _Cherry red._

**Author's Note:**

> im on a sad kick i guess. mostly just trying to work on imagery tho lol. where does one find beta readers?
> 
> title means "nature is not saddened," in reference to the cherry trees that scho watches as blake dies.
> 
> again, if u enjoyed (or didn't!) leave me a comment or kudos or smth. have a lovely day !


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